"Gentlemen, start your engines."

Vroooooom! A speck of a colors race by as you try to steal a look. Vroooooom! The fumes fill your nostrils, cars racing by at excesses of 200 miles/hour, it's hard to breath. Vroooooom!

Come to the great state of Indiana during the month of May and you'll be able to experience this once in a lifetime experience, the Indy 500! Called the "Greatest racing spectacle in the world," the race lives up to its name and more. The event can house over 230,000 people. To put that in context, it would take close to four Cowboys AT&T stadiums, which is a behemoth and the largest NFL stadium, to house the Indy 500. Four of them! That's just an insane amount of people.

The cars are so loud that having lived about eight miles away from the track almost my whole life, I can STILL hear them during qualifications! Also, a cool tidbit for those runners out there, if you ever want to run on the actual track and kiss those famous bricks, sign up for the Indy half-marathon and you'll get your wish. Part of the 13.1 mile run actually goes out on the track. With the exception of finishing the race, it's probably the coolest part of the run.

I didn't think the race was very "world-renowned" in my early years, but that changed when I studied abroad and was in some minuscule Italian train station and saw this.

World-renowned it is!

Now I could go on and on about the Indy 500 and how you should make a trip at least once in your lifetime to come see it, but I want to talk more about Indiana. I’m traveling the United States in my goal to reach all fifty states by the end of the year and Indiana was the first one I traveled to (i.e. born here).

So if you couldn’t tell, Indiana is a sports state. In addition to the Indy 500, we have the Colts and Pacers. Before the arrival of the recently retired #18, it was a basketball state. Thankfully he showed us the error of our ways. We also have IU basketball and Notre Dame football. Now I know some out there will get angry because I didn’t mention other sports or universities, but there are good reasons. What other university has won championships in those sports and had two of the most iconic sports movies ever made about their sports? Of course I’m referring to "Rudy."

And "Hoosiers."

I mean really, two of the greatest underdog stories of all time and they were true stories, which only makes them that much sweeter to watch. Okay, okay, Butler gets honorable mention.

So if you're a Hoosier (that's an Indiana native for all of you non-natives) you should know something about our state pie, sugar cream pie. It is like heaven on earth and you have to serve it slightly warmed up with a little scoop of ice cream.

What a great state. I'm glad I'm coming back home to Indiana!